When I am in the midst of composing one of my hilarious weekly columns, my wife often interrupts me with the pretense of cutting my hair. The result is the loss of a brilliant column, albeit the appearance of my ears.
Today, as I was thirty-seven percent into an exquisitely funny column, Kate said, “Time for a trim.”
“No. I will notify you when I require a haircut.”
Thirty seconds later, Kate — illustrating her female patience and Venus sensitivity — killed the power to our home. Her maneuver instantly crashed my computer.
I switched the power back on and stared forlornly at my blank screen as the computer rebooted. “What you have done would be grounds for a divorce in any civilized country. I have lost a column that was not only funny but also poignant.”
“It was neither. You were belittling my family.”
“I was writing about myself,” I said. “Besides, you know I do not approve of your reading, over my shoulder, anything I memorialize in writing.”
“You memorialized that my mother put her foot under yours and you accidentally stepped on it,” said Kate.
“She should not have placed her feet under mine while we were playing cards,” I said. “I thought it was pretty wonderful of me to play cards with her.”
“You beast,” said Kate. “Why would an eighty year old woman with foot problems encourage you to step on her?”
“Your mother’s behavior is something that a person who is not right in the head would do. It falls under the category of lunatic behavior.”
“You did not even apologize to her,” said Kate. My wife, standing beside me in my den, had somehow maneuvered a pointy haircutting scissors within a few millimeters of my eyeball. Snip went the scissors in her little fist. A lock of my hair fell.
“Get away,” I said, “You’re deliberately upsetting me so I will lose my hilarious and poignant column.”
“You take yourself far too seriously.”
“Kate, remove those scissors from the vicinity of my eyes immediately. You could blind me.”
“You’ll be all right as long as you hold still.” Snip, snip, snip.
I felt the cold tips of the scissors brush my neck. “You are going to cut off another wedge of my ear. Stop!”
Snip, snip, snip.
On our honeymoon Kate had pounced on me with those same scissors to introduce me to the way she would use grooming techniques to control me. She had managed to cut one of my ears, still scarred. “Kate, have you forgotten how badly I bled the first time you came at me with scissors?”
“I nicked you because you moved.” Now she was mowing my hair with electric clippers as she steadied my skull with the very hand that held those lethal scissors. I was a heartbeat from being blinded.
Kate rambled on about the grocery list and our lack of closet space. With her pointy scissors and those infernal clippers tearing into my scalp, I was a virtual prisoner.
I hunched there like a little frozen rabbit, forced to let the woman I shared my bed with, get away with a combination of extortion and kidnapping. (I have long known she is a felon but she continues to beguile the authorities.)
“There,” Kate said, holding up a mirror. “See how well your haircut turned out.”
“It cost me a very funny column. I can’t even remember what I was trying to write about.”
“Write about getting a haircut.” She slipped her scissors into their sheath.
“There is not a single humorous aspect about your attack,” I said. I watched her drop the deadly scissors into a drawer. Before sunset, those scissors were going to disappear.
“And don’t touch my scissors,” she said. “Remember, I come from a long line of lunatics.”
